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Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise
From: |
Werner LEMBERG |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise |
Date: |
Wed, 29 Aug 2001 23:32:44 +0200 (CEST) |
> > . In compatible mode, stay with the current behaviour as shown
> > above.
>
> Presumably, that means the groff deviations from Unix troff
> behaviour still exist?
??? I don't understand your sentence. Please explain.
> > . In non-compatible mode, the requests \f, \H, \R, \s, and \S are
> > now grouped as `transparent escapes'; starting a line with one of
> > them no longer preserves the beginning-of-line flag.
>
> What perspective was used for the terminology? It seems to me that
> \f, etc., have been made opaque, not transparent, in that they clear
> the bol flag and therefore have a side-effect. I'm not saying it's
> wrong to call them transparent, I'd just like to know the reasoning
> as an aide memoir.
You are right, it was a bad decision. I'll change it to opaque. :-)
> Is it really necessary to deviate groff from troff in this way?
Is there any real use of being compatible with this undocumented
behaviour which IMHO only adds complications without benefits?
> It's an extra thing to document, and worse, an extra thing to be
> read and understood by everybody.
I would argue exactly the other way round. As Ted explained, he
discovered this troff anomaly by trial and error -- I wonder how many
hours he spent to fully explore it. If this problem weren't here, he
had actually *saved* time.
> More complexity in the code, etc.
Not at all. It is much more natural in groff's code that all escapes
return a token instead of continuing a loop.
> Why not just leave well alone and fix the troff incompatibilities.
If you use -C, it tries to be as compatible as possible.
> It seems as if groff is a bit too keen to fix troff's perceived
> faults without weighing up the associated costs.
Costs? Which costs? groff is not the holy grail. I much prefer a
consistent interface to an inconsistent compatibility.
Werner
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, (continued)
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Werner LEMBERG, 2001/08/29
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Ralph Corderoy, 2001/08/26
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Werner LEMBERG, 2001/08/27
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Andrew Koenig, 2001/08/27
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Werner LEMBERG, 2001/08/28
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Ralph Corderoy, 2001/08/28
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Clarke Echols, 2001/08/28
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Werner LEMBERG, 2001/08/29
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise,
Werner LEMBERG <=
- Re: [Groff] surprise, surprise, Ted Harding, 2001/08/29
- [Groff] #ifdef WIDOW_CONTROL???, Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab, 2001/08/30
- [Groff] An observation on .writem, Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab, 2001/08/30
- Re: [Groff] An observation on .writem, Ralph Corderoy, 2001/08/30
- Re: [Groff] An observation on .writem, Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab, 2001/08/31
- Re: [Groff] An observation on .writem, Werner LEMBERG, 2001/08/31
- [Groff] .cf and .trf, Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab, 2001/08/30
- RE: [Groff] .cf and .trf, Ted Harding, 2001/08/30
- RE: [Groff] .cf and .trf, Sigfrid Lundberg, Netlab, 2001/08/30
- RE: [Groff] .cf and .trf, Ted Harding, 2001/08/30